 BIO Simon Bestwick was born in Wolverhampton, bred in Manchester, and now lives on the Wirral while pining for Wales. He is the author of six novels, four full-length short story collections and has been four times shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He is married to long-suffering fellow author Cate Gardner, his latest book is the short story collection And Cannot Come Again, and his new novella, Roth-Steyr, will be out in October from Black Shuck Books. WEBSITE LINKS Link to latest release: https://blackshuckbooks.co.uk/roth-steyr/ Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Simon-Bestwick/e/B00355JO22 Blog: http://simon-bestwick.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @GevaudanShoal Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/Simon-Bestwick-373730462654091 Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I grew up in Manchester, and now I live on the Wirral. I’m married to an amazing and bonkers woman who’s also a superb writer. I’ve recently started back in my day job after a long spell off sick. I started writing properly in 1997, when I was twenty-three years old. That was twenty-three years ago, and I still don’t know what I’m doing half the time, but I write every day nonetheless. My family come from North Wales, and I’d love to live there one day. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? There are so many I’d want to avoid – Arodias Thorne from The Feast Of All Souls, Gideon Dace from The Faceless and Tereus Winterborn from the Black Road novels all spring to mind – but I think the worst of the lot is from a novel I completed earlier this year: a truly reprehensible creature by the name of Septimus Jubb. Hopefully you’ll get to meet him in print one day soon – but hopefully only in print! Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? Movies, TV and theatre. I grew up on Tom Baker-era Dr Who, which combined SF and horror in many senses, as far as I was concerned (and despite the bad press Peter Davison gets, I enjoyed a lot of the stories from his era too – the killer androids and the Cybermen in Earthshock were bloody terrifying), and of course Blake’s 7. And there were limited series like The Nightmare Man, although I only saw scraps of it at the time; the impressions shows like that created helped shape me, and it turned out to be damned good when I finally got to see it! In my teens I was more interested in movies, although most of what I saw was Hollywood and I didn’t get to acquaint myself with European and indie cinema till much later. I did aspire to be a screenwriter for a while. At University I became more focused on theatre, and influenced by writers like Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, Howard Barker and David Rudkin, who combined social commentary, an interest in finding a language that was both raw and poetic and unsparing, often horrifying imagery. Barker and Rudkin, whose focus became increasingly on finding an individual voice and going their own way, rather than being propounding an ideology, are particular heroes of mine. All of that came with me when I went back to writing fiction. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? I’m far more inclined to embrace it now than I was a few years ago. The problem is that what a lot of people understand by the term ‘horror’ has often been ‘gore and special effects and nothing else’. That may have changed in more recent years, at least in TV and film. There was also the whole thing of trying to build a writing career amid the realisation that ‘horror’ is largely seen as a pretty toxic brand. However, I don’t care anywhere near as much about that as I used to. I’m done making calculations about the ‘market’, not least because a) trying to do so is like trying to divine the future by reading chicken entrails and b) because it’s brought me neither financial success nor creative fulfillment. These days I’m about writing exactly what I want to write, then worrying where to find a home for it. The thing is that a lot of people actually like horror without realising they do – that is, if you mention horror to them they might grimace and say it isn’t their thing, but show them the work of M.R. James or Shirley Jackson, for instance, and they’ll enjoy it. How to get people to look past the label and read the book, though, is the big question. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? I don’t know. My own impulse has been towards writing stuff with a more historical setting, or a near-future or non-realistic one, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of that creeping in. How do you capture a world falling apart in real time? If you describe things as they are around you at a given moment, it’ll already be a period piece by the time it’s published. I have a novella being released last year which is set in a Britain that’s recognisable but fragmenting under economic and climate chaos and civil unrest – it isn’t what the story’s about but it’s a constant backdrop to it. But it was pre-COVID and already seems dated. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? Because it’s dark, violent and grotesque. We’re curious about those things. Part of us wants to do those things. We want to see them and know what they’d be like, without the consequences. In real life, we want to avoid the terrible things that can happen, but fiction lets us face them head-on. There’s a quote from Nieszche I read years ago: “The tragic artist is not a pessimist. He says yes to everything possible and terrible.” I think that applies to horror fiction too. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? No idea. There is so much going on in the genre right now that I never feel I’ve read widely enough in it to comment on it! What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off? There are so many just now, as I said, that it’s hard to know where to start! But I’d like to mention Laura Mauro, Georgina Bruce, Paul St. John Mackintosh, Andrew David Barker, Rich Hawkins, Nicole Cushing and Tom Johnstone, as authors I’ve recently read whose work’s left an impact on me. Mind you, a number of them have been writing for years now, so I don’t know if I can call them ‘new’ or ‘upcoming’ – they’re already here! Lynda E. Rucker’s also been on the scene for a number of years, but should be read and known by far many more people. And in the mainstream, although her work’s usually billed as crime or thriller, C.J. Tudor’s written superbly eerie novels like The Other People and The Taking Of Annie Thorne. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? Yes, despite my best efforts! There was one review that was so unpleasant and gratuitous that its author has died a horrible death in a recent (so far unpublished) novel of mine. Of positive ones, there’s one for The Feast Of All Souls that praised how it handled the death of the main character’s child. The reviewer had lost a child herself, so I cherish that one particularly: that kind of praise means a great deal. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? They’re all fun in their different ways, but it’s usually the rewrite that’s the tough part – finding and fixing everything that’s wrong with the first draft, and cutting it down to size because it’s sprawling and rambling. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? No, although there are plenty of people who’d like to tell writers what they can and can’t write about. All of whom are cordially invited to insert a rusty bicycle frame up their rear exits. But I digress. Writing is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? Well, I hope I’ve got better, for a start. I’ve become more inclined to wing it than to plan stuff out, to trust my instincts and surprise myself. Those are the main things that spring to mind. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? Never give up. Which of your characters is your favourite? Biff and Emily from Angels of the Silences (you can’t have one without the other), closely followed by the Black Road series’ Gevaudan Shoal. Which of your books best represents you? Don’t ask me to choose between my children! They all do, in different ways. The inside of my head is a very weird place. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? I have lots, but it wouldn’t be fair to stop people discovering them for themselves. :) Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? Well, my latest release is Roth-Steyr, out from Black Shuck Books on Halloween. Valerie Varden works in the mortuary of an inner-city hospital and lives with her girlfriend. She looks like an ordinary enough woman, but she isn’t. A hundred years ago, as the Austro-Hungarian Empire fell apart at the end of World War One, Valerie became immortal. She has a dark and violent past she’s still trying to atone for, but now it’s catching up with her. Her former comrades have started turning up dead, all shot with an antique Roth-Steyr pistol. To survive, Valerie will have to return to the violence of her past, but to do so may cost her everything she has. At the moment I’m writing an unashamed straight-up horror novel set in the Peak District. The working title is Tatterskin. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? I’ve just finished The Greatcoat, the late Helen Dunmore’s ghost story for Hammer Books from a few years ago. Dunmore was a brilliant writer whose stuff I love (The Siege, her novel about the defence of Leningrad in World War Two, and her short story collections Love Of Fat Men and Ice Cream are outstanding) and it’s got me reading any other novels of hers I can lay hands on. As far as disappointment goes, I tend not to finish books that don’t do anything for me these days, so it wouldn’t be fair to comment on any of the ones I’ve abandoned. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, anyway. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? “Mr Bestwick, will you accept the Nobel Prize for Literature?” “Oh, go on, then.”  “You never know which ideas will stick in your mind, let alone where they’ll go. Roth-Steyr began with an interest in the odd designs and names of early automatic pistols, and the decision to use one of them as a story title. What started out as an oddball short piece became a much longer and darker tale about how easily a familiar world can fall apart, how old convictions vanish or change, and why no one should want to live forever. It’s also about my obsession with history, in particular the chaotic upheavals that plagued the first half of the twentieth century and that are waking up again. Another ‘long dark night of the European soul’ feels very close today. So here’s the story of Valerie Varden. And her Roth-Steyr.” Click Here to Pre-order a copy from Black Shuck Books    Comments are closed.
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